“There’s not much doubt, Rupert Murdoch declared on his Fox News cable network last year, that Steve Jobs is the best chief executive in the U.S.,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt writes for Fortune.

“That was in June 2010, when Murdoch was still plotting with Apple to launch The Daily. The owner of the now defunct News of the World has been busy with more pressing concerns, but we haven’t heard much from him lately about Jobs’ incredible focus or the beauty of Apple’s products,” P.E.D. writes. “In fact, a couple of stories in the Wall Street Journal this week suggest there may have been a shift in the editorial wind at Murdoch’s News Corp. properties.”

P.E.D. writes, “What’s going on? We can only speculate. But Murdoch, despite what he told a Parliamentary committee this week, is a hands-on editor, and nowhere more so than at the Journal. Could the paper’s editorial attitude toward Apple have anything to do with what’s happening at The Daily?”

MacDailyNews Take: It’s not Apple’s fault that The Daily sucked at launch. We haven’t gotten around to giving it another chance. Such are the risks of leaving a bad first impression.

P.E.D. writes, “When The Daily launched in February, Murdoch predicted that it would ‘sell millions.’ Five months later, that doesn’t seem a likely prospect… Murdoch has not always been enamored of Steve Jobs. Michael Wolff, the author of The Man Who Owns the News, says that in his presence Murdoch once described Jobs as a ‘loon.”

If Murdoch feels he’s been betrayed by The Daily — an adventure that ran up $30 million in start-up costs and has been burning through nearly $500,000 a week ever since — who knows what he’s saying about Apple’s CEO today?”

There definitely IS something going on at WSJ. Minutes before closing, just before earnings report, they came out with the article about so called “secret’ meetings of board members re succession plans. Obvious and blatant manipulation to pick that time to report a “secret” meeting that has been held for the last eleven years with board members, SJ never present at any of the meetings.

Mr Murdoch calls Steve Jobs a loon? Mr Jobs has a direct video connection with every webcam enabled Mac or iWhatever and I very much doubt he or his associates have ever used that possibility to look in on person in their time of distress or at any time.

I do like it… They even sent me a notification to come back for free. And am very tempted… I do like it.

But since you are a subscriber, can you tell me if you can go back to a previous date yet?

If i forget/can’t read the daily one day… or like this upcoming week, will be in the middle of NOWHERE with zero 3G and possibly no chance of getting online at all…. I’ll miss a few days. If i can’t go back and see a previous day/week… I’m really not interested.

If this were the Third Reich, Murdoch would not be the Jews. He would be Hitler. Like too many other successful executives these days, Murdoch is a fascist a-hole who thinks his money gives him the right to impose his opinion and philosophy on everyone else.

Ted Turner would be closer to the Third Reich, he’s the more established media mogul who wants “95% of the earth’s population eliminated”, has poisoned rivers so he can catch just the fish he likes, wants the government to control breeding, and thinks equal rights should be suspended for a century.

But D’s don’t like to acknowledge their own blatant hypocrisy when battling R’s, (or civil rights, that’s always a hoot) and seem to go blind when following their own monstrous bigots. I can’t find anything Murdoch has said endorsing or fantasizing about mass murder, nor to the tune of 95% of the planet.

Name calling is cheap. Besides, I am married and faithful. I don’t know much about Turner but Murdoch has explicitly given instructions to Fox “News” never to mention global warming or climate change without sticking in the increasingly out of date, absurd and dangerous statement that the “science is not yet settled.” In fact, the science is well settled enough for urgent action, and Murdoch is just stooging for I know not what group of criminally selfish fossil-fuel pushers, or for all I know just obsessively, obstinately ignorant. Either way, he’s effectively brainwashing the USA on the most important issue of this century and if he gets away with it much longer, he’ll have been more effective at killing millions than Ted Turner will ever be.

The science is NOT settled and never has been. The so-called ‘consensus’ has been driven by a small number of zealots who have managed to suppress dissent and corrupt the peer-review process abetted by fellow-travellers in the press. Not only that, but as it has become clear, they have resorted to manipulation of data as in the case of New Zealand where a warming trend was ‘detected’ but, after the raw data was reanalysed by independent scientists and a court case, has been shown to show no warming trend at all.

There has been no warming since 1998 and the UK Met Office has already begun a retrenchment, accepting that variations in solar output could account for more than 50% 0f any of the variation detected so far.

I wish you were right, but you are in denial and repeating cherry-picked nonsense and pro-pollution talking points. Only a tiny minority of climate scientists have any serious doubt about the basic AGW theory. Just look at the weather. More and more records (of all sorts) are being broken every year, just as predicted.

I wish you were correct and there is nothing to worry about, but I would bet everything I own that you are wrong. Unfortunately, time will show me and Mr. Gore were right, and you and Mr. Murdoch, dangerously, foolishly wrong. Is it worth playing with civilization? To preserve what principle?

Just think about it, there are what, 7 billion people on Earth… we have occupied, farmed, cut down most available land on Earth… and by burning fossil fuels we have raised the CO2 content of the atmosphere by 50%. Is it reasonable to think all that would have no effects? No, it’s not. Nothing is “natural” anymore, not even the weather. There is no “nature.” Everything on God’s Earth has been affected by Man. Every hot day, every cold day, every flash flood downpour, is partly affected by what we are doing. We can shut our eyes in denial and continue affecting things without purpose, by wanton pollution, and let the chips fall where they may… or we can wake up and study what we are doing with a clear head and try to actively manage the affects we are having on the Earth, so we don’t make them worse than we have to.

Let’s say for a moment that you weren’t an idiot… and heard something bad about Rupert Murdoch, that he was politically trying to skew news and change people’s opinions, then I told you that his primary domestic opposition, Ted Turner, is not only preaching about killing 95% of the population openly but in a holy war with Murdoch over ratings since 2003, it would behoove you to maybe pull your head out of your butt for 5 seconds, fire up Google to at least check it out. Perhaps your playing for the wrong team?

But no, you want to double down and bring up some vague gossip about evil right wingers and their one TV channel? You can disagree with Murdoch’s politics and just change the channel, if he’s guilty of this wire tapping stuff, then he’s an unethical journalist at worst. However you’re totally ignoring the guy openly and continually preaching atrocities in favor of fucking gossip. Clearly you have no appreciation for context, nor have you invested more than a second in critical thinking or self education.

I’m guessing that your investment in GW and anti-Murdoch stuff is less intellectual thought and more about a self-affirming political fantasy that says you are good because R’s are evil. Further you probably don’t give a shit about anyone or anything, and this nonsense only serves to cover your own insecurity/short-comings and help you tear down others.

Get used to the name calling, and I suggest your thin skin should be your secondary concern, and maybe worry about your brain a little more. If you want rational and civil discourse, remember you’re on the side of the death cultists, and ‘ignorant slut’ is a comparatively generous term.

Actually and sadly that seems to be exactly the case. There a lot of understandably P.O.’ed people, economy, partisan extremism, etc., and Rupert and companies feed off of our woes and vomit it back at us with no constructive purpose whatsoever… and we go, like dogs, to that vomit.

The world is in plenty of frustration without minions like Rupert whipping up the fire so they can get rich on our misery and make themselves more important than they really are.

So your problem is his media bias? But you have no problem with Turner or the Sulzbergers? How does Murdoch even rate?
In order for him to be so super evil, you’ve made an indirect comparison that somehow his behavior is worse or different than others in his industry.

At any rate, the right wing might be wrong, but at least their news sources (even biased) rate higher than quippy ignorant one liners from former stand-up comedians. This is why you idiot donkey boys are so much easier to debate (provided your kept from retreating and trying to change the subject). The right at least ‘reads’ Murdoch’s papers and there are sources to debate.

Look at all the petty retards here waisting brain power worrying about Murdoch, while Turner poisons rivers or preaches killing everyone on Charlie ‘fucking’ Rose? It’s embarrassing for Mac users, you’ve got all this amazing technology, yet you refuse to power up your brains. I suggest you download the sheep sheering app, so you can further help arrogant elites distract you with their leftie vs. righty battles. Translation: Baaaaaaaaaaaaa!

Keep in mind, there are many fundamental and irreconcilable differences in the world views of Jobs and Murdoch. And if Murdoch admires Jobs’ work so much, then why do his papers (including the new WSJ) all look so trashy?

As I watch MDN descend from being a Mac rumour and news site into a political mud slinging and insult forum, I’m puzzled by why there are so many ultra right wingers on here anyway. Apple definitely trends to the liberal side of the spectrum, yet the authors of the right wing venom filled, insult ridden and typically off topic rants seem to have such an air of superiourity and self righteousness. Everything they claim to stand for is so against what I perceive to be Apple’s core values. There seems to be no place left in the world today for civil discourse.

My theory is that most people who bother to follow Mac news this carefully are not just Apple fans, but active individual Apple investors. So the political cross-section you’re seeing is not so much an Apple demographic, as an active-individual-investor demographic. Apparently, people who spend a lot of time worrying about their ducats tend to be conservative. Which isn’t so surprising; what’s more surprising is that these rich conservatives should tallk and think like people with no class or education whatsoever.